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James Wolcott proves again that just because one is an intellectual snob one can’t always comment intelligently on some subjects. In fact, James Wolcott is the poster boy for the arrogant snobs that inhabit the rarified atmosphere of New York City’s intellectual elites. People who feel that they can condemn something even if they haven’t the very first idea of what they are speaking of. Who can condescendingly comment on a subject that they clearly have no earthly idea about. Just like MASH’s Charles Winchester. Such as Wolcott shows here:

Momentarily misplacing his “Heh, indeed,” Reynolds comments:

“An armed society is a polite society, as Robert Heinlein noted.”

Now I enjoyed reading Heinlein when I was, like, thirteen, but he’s something you outgrow once you acquire a dab of literary and intellectual sophistication. Even the teen me was more enamoured of Ray Bradbury, whose sci-fi cast a much more poetic mood of discovery and desolation than Heinlein’s adventures. (I still think The Martian Chronicles is a wonder.) Whatever one might say about Heinlein’s talent and character, worldly he was not.

Reynolds has far less excuse for being such a rube, considering the global advances in tourism and communications.

Let’s start at the top:

I enjoyed reading Heinlein when I was, like, thirteen

Well, James, many other juveniles enjoyed reading the novels he wrote targeting…I know this is a shocker…juveniles. But that was just a small portion of his work. Robert Heinlein is considered, particularly for his work after his contract writing Juvenile SF for Scribners expired, one of the premier storytellers of the genre.

I suppose that Wolcott has never heard of “Stranger in a Strange Land”. It became a counterculture classic in the mid 60’s with it’s complex satire on sex and religion. It won him his third Hugo, the award for the best writing in the genre.

Wolcott then shows himself to truly be an ass by continuing to show his screaming lack of knowledge about Robert Heinlein.

Whatever one might say about Heinlein’s talent and character, worldly he was not.

If in worldly Wolcott means “un-traveled”, such as the legendary Red State Man is said to be, he is wrong. Heinlein visited every continent on earth. If he means his ideas, Wolcott is wrong there as well. Not only was Heinlein a gifted story teller he was not afraid of ideas. In fact, quite a bit of what he wrote was considered too radical. He often had to push publishers to print his novels. His last novel, in reality his first, was recently published. Remember, this was written in 1938. Here’s a bit from Seth Bokelman’s review as carried on Slashdot:

From then on, the rest of the book is primarily spent following our hero as he is lectured (literally at times) on the ways of the future, covering topics such as polygamy/polyamory, nudism, the stupidity of jealousy, economics, religion, and the treatment of criminals as patients who need to be cured, rather than miscreants who need to be punished. Many of the ideas that turn up later in Heinlein’s books, especially his later books, appear here for the first time. The book is very much, as Spider calls it in the foreword, Heinlein’s literary DNA. This is the primordial ooze from which the later books, (Time Enough For Love, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and dozens more) are formed.

I’m sure Wolcott is big on Transgender issues. Yet it seems that he doesn’t know that the first place many saw the issue raised in the main stream was by Heinlein. A man’s brain in a woman’s body? Surely not from some “rube”.

The fact of the matter is that many of the ideas and concepts that Heinlein wanted to speak to were considered unmarketable! Take a look at these two quotes from John Clute’s review of For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs

“Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person. No act shall constitute a violation of a law valid under this provision unless there is such damage, or immediate present danger of such damage resulting from that act.”

This is a radical doctrine, as Heinlein clearly argues, for it means

“the end of the blue laws, and a grisly unconscious symbiosis between the underworld and the organized churches—for the greatest bulwark of the underworld were always the moral creeds of the churches.”

Clute also tells us of a writer whose examination of various ideas concerning society and politics were stifled by a time not ready for such debates. Whose writing was not uncensored until long after Wolcott seems to have stopped reading him. The 60’s and 70’s allowed Heinlein the freedom to explore various aspects of personal freedom free from the repressive sexual and political censorship of the previous decades. The very social and political situation that Heinlein argues for in 1938 would not be unwelcome by today’s Gay Activists. Nor, in fact, by many social libertarians.

I could go on and on, but what Wolcott’s statement really shows is that he, himself, is the rube. A bumpkin trapped by his own parochial social situation. It is he who should get out and see the world. Wolcott denounces Heinlein as a rube because a quote from Heinlein clashes with Wolcott’s thoughts on gun ownership. Anyone who disagrees in anyway with Wolcott is denigrated as a dullard. Such is the desire for open and honest debate by Vanity Fair’s intellectual elite…little different than the debates on the third grade playground where arguments are won by who can yell “you’re stooopid” the loudest.

By the way, James? Save the “u’s” as in “enamored”, no one thinks you’re spiffy because you use them. New York City is, after all, still in America. The only people it impresses is your fellow educated morons.

Quilly Mammoth

UPDATE: Thanks, Glenn.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2005 at 2:11 pm and is filed under General, SF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.